Σελίδες

Thursday, 29 November 2012

U.N. Court Frees Former Leader of Kosovo

PARIS
— A United Nations war crimes tribunal on Thursday acquitted the former
prime minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, for the second time of
torturing and killing Serb civilians while he was a commander of the
NATO-backed Kosovo Liberation Army during its fight for independence in
1999.

Two of his comrades, Idriz Balaj and Lahi Brahimaj, were also acquitted,
although Mr. Brahimaj has already served a six-year sentence for
torture handed down in an earlier trial. The judges ordered the three
men released immediately.

Supporters cheered and applauded in the courtroom’s public gallery in
The Hague, where proceedings were broadcast via videostream.

The men were expected to return later in the day to Kosovo, where Mr.
Haradinaj’s supporters — even before the verdict — said they hoped he
would return to politics. In Serbia, which is involved in crucial talks
with Kosovo, a former Serbian province before the war, the decision was
expected to provoke a new wave of angry reactions.

Earlier this month, the tribunal enraged the Belgrade government and
many Serbs, when an appeals chamber threw out the convictions of two
Croatian generals, Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac. They had led a 1995
military campaign that recaptured Serb-occupied Croatian land and drove
more than 150,000 Serbs from Croatia.

The overturning of the Croatian and now the Kosovo convictions are seen
as serious setbacks for the prosecution. It has said in recent days that
it will seek a review of the Croatian appeals ruling, in which two of
the five judges wrote unusually sharp dissents.